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During 2007 I spent a lot of time making field recordings of background noise in Paris, and analysing the spectral and rhythmic content of those recordings. I found the more I listened to my recordings, the more musical material I found hidden in these background hisses and hums, chatterings and otherwise banal noises: rhythms, mysterious melodies, energies and harmonic tensions. While working on this commission for the NZSO, I decided to try to capture the intrinsic musical essences I could hear in my field recordings, and interpret those sounds in an orchestral context, with the juxtaposition of the original noise recordings finding musical relationships in the orchestral counterpart. The resulting piece is a conjuring of various energies, or furies, caught in the background noise of Paris, and finding their way into the back of my throat to be sung into a quiet fury.

Lissa Meridan

• Meridan: a quiet fury; computer-set 

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• Meridan: a quiet fury; computer-set 

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• Meridan: a quiet fury; computer-set 

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• Meridan: a quiet fury; electronic part 

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• Dixon: Concertino; computer set 

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I have been haunted by the Cambodian genocide ever since reading Dit Phran’s account of his experiences during the Khmer Rouge years, vividly portrayed in the 1984 movie The Killing Fields. More recently I’ve read biographies of Pol Pot by Philip Short and David Chandler. In 1995, at MOMA in New York, I chanced upon a devastating photographic exhibition of selected portraits from the comprehensive collection of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S-21, where an estimated 14,000 men, women and children passed through its gates to be photographed, interrogated, tortured and finally executed as perceived enemies of Pol Pot’s violent, paranoid regime.

In 2007 I was able to visit Cambodia for the first time. I made daily visits to Tuol Sleng to sit among the portraits and to sense the presence of the victims of the brutal genocide. Mok Bhon is but one of these victims. His face is difficult to read, but his eyes burn into me.

What is the lesson of this dreadful history that unleashed an evil that destroyed one in five of the whole Cambodian population? How can such evil exist in a modern world?

Explanations for phenomena like S-21 are embedded in our capacities to order and obey each other, to bond with each other against strangers, to lose ourselves inside groups, to yearn for perfection and approval, and to vent our anger and confusion, especially when we are encouraged to do so by people we respect, onto other, often helpless people. To find the source of the evil that was enacted at S-21 on a daily basis, we need look no further than ourselves.
David Chandler, Voices from S-21

My Name is Mok Bhon uses transcriptions I made of two genres of traditional Cambodian music: a funeral song played by a trai leak ensemble (singer, gongs, drum, gong-chime circle, and double reed sralai), and a plaintive 3-note melody played on the sneng, an instrument consisting of an animal horn with a reed inserted in its side. The performance of this work is accompanied by images I shot at Tuol Sleng, assembled as a video with the expert help of Andrew Brettell.

I am grateful to the following: Sokun for recording his voice for me, Sokha Mey for translation, and Anton Isselhadt for inviting me to Cambodia in the first place. The work was commissioned for NZSO by my good friend Jack Richards, who wishes to make a dedication to the memory of his friend Kong Orn, another victim of the Khmer Rouge purges.

Jack Body

• Body: My Name is Mok Bhon; computer-set 

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• Jack Body: My Name is Mok Bhon 

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An ogee (‘oh-gee’), or cyma reversa, is a type of interior trim, the outline of which resembles the contour of the main thematic idea in this work.

• Watson, C.: ogee; computer-set 

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• Watson, C.: ogee (solo violin part); computer-set 

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• Watson, C.: ogee (solo violin part); computer-set 

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• Watson, C.: ogee; computer-set 

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This short concerto was written for the Taharoto Orchestra, a group consisting of students from Westlake Girls and Westlake Boys High Schools conducted by Liz Cable. It was the second work I had written for the group. The concerto is cast in the traditional three movement form: fast-slow-fast. Although there is no cadenza as such, the first movement does contain a short solo section where a cadenza might have appeared. The first movement is rather like an extended fanfare, making much use of the chords of F major and G major. Sometimes these two chords sound simultaneously, sometimes they are heard successively. The music opens featuring the percussion and low strings playing ‘pizzicato’, setting in motion the underlying rhythmic energy that pervades the whole movement. The second movement is a short, slow and serious movement., It uses a single theme which is divided into two sections, the first section in A minor, and the second section beginning in C major. This theme is heard three times, the final time allowing the piano to present a varied treatment of the opening section, while the second part of the theme is presented as a canon. The final movement, marked ‘playfully’, uses a mix of 4 beats and 5 beats in a bar. The music appears to have a slightly ‘French neo-classical’ feel to it, using short phrases and simple succinct melodic ideas. The whole work ends with an affirmative cadence in C major.

• Hamilton: Piano Concerto; computer-set 

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• Hamilton: Piano Concerto; computer-set 

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This is pure program music. I wanted to write a sort of New Zealand “Till Eulenspiegel” and chose the legend of how Maui fishes up Aotearoa. All the main events of the story are depicted: how Maui hides in his brothers’ canoe with his magic hook, how he helps his brothers to a fabulous catch, how he lets down his own special hook and catches something unbelievably big which leads to a herculean struggle, how the brothers cut up Maui’s “fish” while he is going to get help, and then the final realisation that the gods are not pleased with the behaviour of the brothers.

The figure of Maui is played by the clarinet, a part which is so important that the work became a Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra.

This is the first part of a projected four movement Maui Cycle which will include Maui slowing the sun, Maui getting fire and the death of Maui.

Kit Powell

• Powell: Te Ika a Maui; computer-set 

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